On the heels of a speech by President Obama last week touting a public-private partnership seeking to “help large fleets reduce diesel and gasoline use by incorporating electric vehicles, alternative fuels, and fuel-saving measures” including mobile applications, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra yesterday described a variety of Federal research programs aimed at deploying new and innovative information and communications technologies throughout the transportation system.  In a blog entry on The White House website, Chopra and Peter Appel, Administrator of the Transportation Department’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration, wrote: The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), through the Research and Innovative Technology Administration’s Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Research Program, in close partnership […]

The National Science Board (NSB) held an Expert Panel Discussion on Data Policies at the National Science Foundation yesterday & today, exploring the opportunities and challenges of a future rooted in data-intensive science and engineering.  Organized by the NSB’s Task Force on Data Policies, the meeting included leading figures in the scientific enterprise across the U.S., the U.K., and Germany.  A key goal was to identify guiding principles for establishing policies on data and artifacts (such as codes). The experts assembled by the NSB described the wealth of opportunities, including entirely new types of science, that stand to be enabled by data-intensive S&E — by virtue of opening up vast new sources […]

The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Council member Stephanie Forrest.  She reports on her department’s opinions about PostDocs in computer science.  We welcome your thoughts about Stephanie’s summary — as well as the broader PostDoc issue — below or at http://cra.org/postdocs.  (More information about the CRA-facilitated conversation on CS PostDocs is available here.) The University of New Mexico’s Computer Science Department has considerable experience training post-doctoral fellows because of its long tradition in interdisciplinary research.  We discussed the pros and cons of post-doctoral fellows at a recent Faculty meeting.  Several of us have had positive experiences with post-docs — they have enriched our department during their stay — and […]

Several items of interest this Monday morning:

President’s FY 2012 Budget Unveiled

President Obama will reveal his budget request for FY 2012 at 10:30am ET this morning. For live coverage, check your favorite news source. Later today, there will be budget briefings by Federal funding agencies, notably the National Science Foundation — including the CISE Directorate — and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Our colleagues at CRA’s Policy Blog will have complete coverage of the President’s anticipated $3.7 trillion request — and specifically what it says about Federal funding for R&D.

You gotta love having geeks in the White House!  In this short video, Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, explains the National Wireless Initiative, which includes a significant research component.  Watch the video here.  Learn more about the National Wireless Initiative here.

The Computing Research Association — the umbrella organization of the CCC — today launched an effort to engage the computing research community in a conversation about PostDocs, at a time when a growing number of recent PhDs in computer science and allied fields are pursuing postdoctoral fellowships. According to data from CRA’s annual Taulbee Survey, the numbers of new PostDocs soared from 60 in 1998 to 159 in 2009 (three-year rolling averages), while the numbers of new tenure-track faculty positions declined sharply, from 224 in 2004 to 151 in 2009 (again, three-year rolling averages).  Moreover, the numbers of recent PhDs who are hired into industry immediately out of graduate school […]